YOU don’t always get the chance to redeem yourself this way, but that’s the opportunity Roger Clemens has now. He can make things right in a place where he badly needs to make things right. He can rectify his place of prominence in the Yankees firmament. And maybe earn that Yankees cap he swears he wants to wear into Cooperstown.

When he first came to New York he was perfectly willing to piggy-back onto the locomotive of the Dynasty Yankees, to attach his own ring-free legacy to a team that was churning out championships on a conveyor belt.

Then, at a time when the Yankees could truly have used Clemens’ horse-like presence to anchor a rapidly-thinning rotation, he was gone, first to a retirement so short it would shame a boxer, then to Houston, where he took the time to blast the Yankees’ treatment of his good pal Andy Pettitte before proving he still had plenty of life left in that immortal right arm of his.

The Yankees haven’t been the same since he left, of course, throwing good money after bad pitching. There was the Kevin Brown mistake. There was the Javier Vazquez mistake. There was the Randy Johnson mistake, the Yankees figuring they could simply plug one future Hall of Famer in place of another. There was the Jaret Wright mistake. And, of course, there was the Carl Pavano mistake, an error that makes all the others seem harmless by comparison.

The Yankees may have gone down those ill-fated pathways even if Clemens had decided to remain a Yankee following the 2003 season. But it was Clemens’ departure that started the dominos tumbling, a calamitous mess that has thus far led to three-plus years of Yankee discomfort and discomfit, including a terrible collapse to the Red Sox in 2004 and losses in the first round of the playoffs the past two years, with the one glaring hole on the roster being the kind of forever ace Clemens has been his whole life.

Now, with the Yankees pitching situation as tenuous as it’s ever been – and far more shaky than a team with a $180 million payroll should ever expect – he comes back for a second tour of duty, this time as a legitimate would-be savior, this time with the Yankees needing to feed off his energy, rather than the other way around.

This is a different team Clemens joins this time around. He is no carpet-bagger anymore, rolling his dice with a shoo-in favorite. If he wanted to take that course, the way he did in 1999, he would have selected Boston – another city in which his image could use some polishing – which, at this point of the season, seems the surer bet.

“Well they came and got me out of Texas,” Clemens announced to the crowd yesterday from George Steinbrenner’s box at Yankee Stadium, just as the fans were rising for the seventh-inning stretch. “It’s a privilege to be back.

“I’ll be talking to y’all soon.”

They came and they got him and, what’s more, they need him now. Despite having won five of their last six, the Yankees still are arm-light and pitching-shy. They face their biggest task in the past dozen years just to negotiate their way into the postseason. Clemens makes that task suddenly much, much easier.

In the American League, the incredible ERAs he accumulated as an Astro – 2.98 in 2004, 1.87 in ’05, 2.30 last year – won’t be quite as microscopic, but neither will the run support with which he was too often forced to make do in Houston. This is a splendid opportunity for him, make no mistake. And he isn’t exactly doing this at discount wages, either.

But it’s a bigger deal for the Yankees, a far bigger deal. Once upon a time, they gave Roger Clemens the chance to complete his dossier, allowed him to consider himself a champion, took him along for the ride in 1999 and 2000.

This time, if all goes according to the script, he’ll be able to repay the debt. You don’t always get that chance in baseball.